Many people on diets drink artificially sweetened sodas, but I find artificial sweeteners to taste foul.
They do indeed. The surprising thing is, at least from personal experience, that with prolonged exposure, the metallic and plasticky aftertaste of artificial sweeteners has gone away. Admittedly, this is with two weeks of probably 6+ cans a day of every diet soda under the sun that you can possibly imagine, and it was fairly foul at the beginning, getting less noticable toward the end of the two weeks.
My advice, at least if you have a sweet tooth like me, is to stick with the diet drinks -- they eventually end up tasting (subjectively at least for me) indistinguishable from the "real" sodas.
it certainly *could* be done, and probably wouldn't even require much effort. While it's generally regarded as ill-advised for people who like to maintain tight, fine-tuned control on their server, for a stable distribution like Debian, I think one *might* considering putting "apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade" in cron.daily.
Yes. The thing is, upgrading in Linux is actually simpler than windows: no reboots, no clicking through EULAs, selecting "recommended updates" that all individually require reboots and make you read stupid docs -- NONE OF THAT.
For a decent distro like Debian (and others as well), it's as simple as su-ing to root, and typing "apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade" (or the equally simple equivalent in many other distros, or for people that run things like apt4rpm). The fact that people are too incompetent to do so is frankly dishearting.
seriously sweet idea!:) I believe this may well be the very first idea for a gift that lets the nerd population show off while still producing a cute/fuzzy result at the end. Honestly, I LIKE!
BTW, sign the damn thing, mmmkay? You'll come to find you regret the things you _didn't_ do much more than the things you did.
*Grin* that *would* be really cute. Even cuter if you could put some type of a motor structure underneath the base to have it hop around following you.
Okay, so I'm totally dreaming by this point, but with a batter, and some kind of a motor that lets the thing pogo around, together with a webcam glued on and some *really good* recognition software, can't we have little mini-luxos just following us around?:-)
Actually, that's only true for massmarket crap produced by the wonderful big studios. If you look around at some of the smaller record labels like Chesky, MapleShade/WildChild, AudioQuest, etc., you'll find that not only do they have more original (non-mass-market) artists, but that they actually care about things like minimalist miking positions, dynamic range, and all sorts of stuff like that as well...
Did you realize that the signal carried by a cable is affected by the dielectric, be it teflon, PVC, or polyethylene? And that additives change the dielectric of the cover and thus the electrical characteristics of a cable, by the way?
Of course, an idiot like you probably doesn't understand the finer (or even the cruder) points of basic physics anyway. Whatever, go fuck your mom some more, would ja? The tapes I'm making are selling for a hefty sum, you know...
No. Look, your definition differs from the commonly accepted definition of the word lossy: therefore you lose.
when you make a second or third generation copy of a DVD, you don't (have to) lose data. You can, if you DivX or do something equally dumb, but you can rip the VOBs, and keep them. They will have all the digital information of the original.
Guess what: when you upload that file to the latest -1 hour w4r3z site, it STILL retains the original quality on the DVD.
The fact that the encoding used on the DVD itself is "lossy" has no bearing on its distribution. DVDs are digital: they don't lose data when copied. Comprendo?
If you want to talk lossy, realize that music, even on a CD, is "lossy" in terms of the fact that everything is normally recorded nowadays at 24 bits, 96 kHz, and must be crammed/downsampled into a 16 bit, 44.1 kHz redbook format. Remember: information was thrown out. However, I don't consider CDs a lossy format, because, outside of abuse, the data stays on the disc, and (more or less), perfect digital copies can be made (with caveats, believe it or not!). Compare this to a tape, where the data is all analog, and CANNOT be perfectly copied from one generation to the next. Not without startrek-style matter replicators, in any case.
Personally, I would have too, but I'm too busy trying to get the @##(*@! snowblower to start down here in hell.
Re:Abuse of the word lossy.
on
Non-MP3 Codecs?
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
The formats are called lossy because given a compressed file, you cannot perfectly reconstruct the original data file. This applies to both #4, and #5.
I am relieved to know that you are totally deaf, and thus cannot hear the difference between a badly encoded mp3, and a SACD. If you wish to remedy this problem, you might want to consider getting new batteries for your hearing aid.
For the rest of us using high-caliber playback systems (clue: this means NOT Bose, NOT Panasonic, NOT Sony, NOT Yamaha, NOT Klipsch), and actually have some sense of hearing, the difference between those so-called lossy files and the original is night and day.
I just read the entire site. Very honestly, the user was being a fuckwit. Sure, the team members on the IRC Channel and in other places could have responded more nicely, but the facts were on their side in the end.
Re-read the original IRC logs that started the whole thing -- while Richard might be a dickhead, the webmaster of said site is a total, incomprehensible idiot. I kid you not.
It seems like the real sweet spot is the 18-inchers, equal to a normal 19 inch monitor. It seems the 17 inchers aren't hugely available, whereas the 18 inchers are, and don't cost much more, if at all.
Re:They're Trying So Hard...
on
Linux Virus Alert
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
There are several answers to this. Besides the 'never run strange things as root' mantra, there is also the 'compile from source whenever possible' mantra, as well as the 'patch system from local and remote exploits judiciously' wisdom.
Alternatively, for the Ultra-Paranoid, you can simply run OpenBSD where most everything you need is included in the base install, and all "approved" 3rd party apps (ports/packages collection) have at least had source code closely examined by people with minds for code far better than yourself.
Biological selection does nothing except removing the weak ones, it cannot automatically create systems which work well.
In short, I believe the biological selection is just that, selection. The creation of stuff will need some direction.
And I have to nod vigorously to that. Even taking the model of accelerated evolution through human breeding of species: you direct two animals together to breed. You don't just let the Ps, the F1s, the F2s, etc. just all wander around in a pen, have a sniper sitting on a post shooting the ones you don't want, and hoping the rest go at it...
but with my high-school level of physics, I don't understand how this relates to the 2nd law of thermo.
Isn't there something about eventually the universe undergoing heat death, where all useful forms of energy are converted to heat, which is the random vibration of molecules and thus "useless?" If so, does this device mean that we won't undergo heat death, since heat generated can be put back into something useful again, like electricity?
These can be reproduced without tubes more reliably, consistently, and cheaper.
Eee? The point is not to produce distortion. The point is that while tubes produce more distortion, it is even-order harmonics, and that the ear is far less sensitive to it, such that there is less "effective" distortion than the small amounts of odd-order produced by a solid state, to which the ear is far more sensitive. Tests show that 0.5% odd-order THD is easily heard by the ear, but that a few integral percentage points of even-order are necessary for detection.
And you are a pregnant teenage mother with a history of ear infections _and_ asthma? If not, you can't hear that waste of audio spectrum. Your dog might appreciate it, however.
Your point was that Vinyl had compressed frequency response. It does not. It may have compressed dynamic range, but that's another point. Whether or not humans can hear 30+ kHz frequencies is not a closed question -- why does SACD and DVDA spec out to 100 kHz? Surely they are not meant for my dog?
Another point: better frequency response allows for higher-order noise-shaping algorithms that do far less damage to the high frequencies that humans are proven to be able to hear. (20 kHz)
Jitter: I am referring to general clocking inaccuracies in things like the SPDIF interface. This is a measurable phenomenon, and is greatly minimized in some of the highest-end CD transports, like this one
As for what tubes can do that equivalent solid states cannot? See here. Tube amplifiers of equivalent power give far greater voltage swings, and moreover, clip far more gently than solid-states.
Tube amplifiers produce Even-Order harmonic distortion. Psycoacoustics show humans are far less sensitive to even-order harmonic distortion than odd-order, meaning that a higher percentage is 'permissable' before becoming audible.
Fact 2:
Vinyl has frequency content out to 30+ kHz. Have the graphs to prove it.
Fact 3: equalizers introduce jitter. Jitter leads to distortion.
Opinion 1: original poster was dumb to use ad hominem attacks.
Opinion 2: your 'appeal to authority' argument (I am an EE, I work at a radio station, etc.) is just that -- a logical fallacy.
How difficult is it to emulate a moving target such as DirectX, especially since driver support on Linux is limited, and Microsoft seems to release a new DirectX version every 6 months or a year?
On the other hand, their subscription service looks interesting, although how much people will pay to "guide" their work to their favorite games is rather questionable. These things are not business apps, and the entire concept is made less palatable by the fact that the longer it takes to get a game running, the less desirable the game is.
For completeness, I should point out that there are other approaches other than bracing and thick walls, such as JM-Reynaud's transmission lines together with his medite materials, or dipole electrostats such as the irreproachable Quad ESLs, which require absolutely no rigid walls whatsoever.
Except for the fact that your consumer-grade Karmen Hardon CD player sets the SCMS bit when you make a direct digital copy. Once that bit is set (and you do get one fair-use copy), you can't make any further copies. SCMS had been around since the mid-'80s; I'm surprised that it hasn't been mentioned here.
Something like the M-Audio Audiophile 2496 can be found for around $160 or so from DigitalConnection (cheaper than an SBLive 5.1 Plat), and you can toggle said SCMS bit on, or off, at will. Did I mention that it takes SPDIF in, and that it's a worthy card to consider anyway, if you're into even moderately high-end audio? (mmm, 24-bit dac, 96 khz sampling for recording...) For the average consumer, this is _the_ ultimate card for clean digital copies of these new CDs that are coming out.
Slashdot Mirror
Many people on diets drink artificially sweetened sodas, but I find artificial sweeteners to taste foul.
They do indeed. The surprising thing is, at least from personal experience, that with prolonged exposure, the metallic and plasticky aftertaste of artificial sweeteners has gone away. Admittedly, this is with two weeks of probably 6+ cans a day of every diet soda under the sun that you can possibly imagine, and it was fairly foul at the beginning, getting less noticable toward the end of the two weeks.
My advice, at least if you have a sweet tooth like me, is to stick with the diet drinks -- they eventually end up tasting (subjectively at least for me) indistinguishable from the "real" sodas.
it certainly *could* be done, and probably wouldn't even require much effort. While it's generally regarded as ill-advised for people who like to maintain tight, fine-tuned control on their server, for a stable distribution like Debian, I think one *might* considering putting "apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade" in cron.daily.
Yes. The thing is, upgrading in Linux is actually simpler than windows: no reboots, no clicking through EULAs, selecting "recommended updates" that all individually require reboots and make you read stupid docs -- NONE OF THAT.
For a decent distro like Debian (and others as well), it's as simple as su-ing to root, and typing "apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade" (or the equally simple equivalent in many other distros, or for people that run things like apt4rpm). The fact that people are too incompetent to do so is frankly dishearting.
seriously sweet idea! :) I believe this may well be the very first idea for a gift that lets the nerd population show off while still producing a cute/fuzzy result at the end. Honestly, I LIKE!
BTW, sign the damn thing, mmmkay? You'll come to find you regret the things you _didn't_ do much more than the things you did.
FUCK YOU! Go stick your head up your wet ass, pigfucker!
*Grin* that *would* be really cute. Even cuter if you could put some type of a motor structure underneath the base to have it hop around following you.
:-)
Okay, so I'm totally dreaming by this point, but with a batter, and some kind of a motor that lets the thing pogo around, together with a webcam glued on and some *really good* recognition software, can't we have little mini-luxos just following us around?
Actually, that's only true for massmarket crap produced by the wonderful big studios. If you look around at some of the smaller record labels like Chesky, MapleShade/WildChild, AudioQuest, etc., you'll find that not only do they have more original (non-mass-market) artists, but that they actually care about things like minimalist miking positions, dynamic range, and all sorts of stuff like that as well...
Thanks for the sarcasm, moron.
Did you realize that the signal carried by a cable is affected by the dielectric, be it teflon, PVC, or polyethylene? And that additives change the dielectric of the cover and thus the electrical characteristics of a cable, by the way?
Of course, an idiot like you probably doesn't understand the finer (or even the cruder) points of basic physics anyway. Whatever, go fuck your mom some more, would ja? The tapes I'm making are selling for a hefty sum, you know...
No. Look, your definition differs from the commonly accepted definition of the word lossy: therefore you lose.
when you make a second or third generation copy of a DVD, you don't (have to) lose data. You can, if you DivX or do something equally dumb, but you can rip the VOBs, and keep them. They will have all the digital information of the original.
Guess what: when you upload that file to the latest -1 hour w4r3z site, it STILL retains the original quality on the DVD.
The fact that the encoding used on the DVD itself is "lossy" has no bearing on its distribution. DVDs are digital: they don't lose data when copied. Comprendo?
If you want to talk lossy, realize that music, even on a CD, is "lossy" in terms of the fact that everything is normally recorded nowadays at 24 bits, 96 kHz, and must be crammed/downsampled into a 16 bit, 44.1 kHz redbook format. Remember: information was thrown out. However, I don't consider CDs a lossy format, because, outside of abuse, the data stays on the disc, and (more or less), perfect digital copies can be made (with caveats, believe it or not!). Compare this to a tape, where the data is all analog, and CANNOT be perfectly copied from one generation to the next. Not without startrek-style matter replicators, in any case.
Now, do you see what I mean?
Personally, I would have too, but I'm too busy trying to get the @##(*@! snowblower to start down here in hell.
The formats are called lossy because given a compressed file, you cannot perfectly reconstruct the original data file. This applies to both #4, and #5.
I am relieved to know that you are totally deaf, and thus cannot hear the difference between a badly encoded mp3, and a SACD. If you wish to remedy this problem, you might want to consider getting new batteries for your hearing aid.
For the rest of us using high-caliber playback systems (clue: this means NOT Bose, NOT Panasonic, NOT Sony, NOT Yamaha, NOT Klipsch), and actually have some sense of hearing, the difference between those so-called lossy files and the original is night and day.
(clue #2: high-caliber DOES mean:
Mark Levinson
Krell
Plinius
Nelson Pass
Manley
Sonic Frontiers
Dynaudio
Sonus Faber
Avantgarde
Rockport
Siltech
Nordost
Goldmund
FMS
47 Labs
Catching the drift yet?
I just read the entire site. Very honestly, the user was being a fuckwit. Sure, the team members on the IRC Channel and in other places could have responded more nicely, but the facts were on their side in the end.
Re-read the original IRC logs that started the whole thing -- while Richard might be a dickhead, the webmaster of said site is a total, incomprehensible idiot. I kid you not.
It seems like the real sweet spot is the 18-inchers, equal to a normal 19 inch monitor. It seems the 17 inchers aren't hugely available, whereas the 18 inchers are, and don't cost much more, if at all.
There are several answers to this. Besides the 'never run strange things as root' mantra, there is also the 'compile from source whenever possible' mantra, as well as the 'patch system from local and remote exploits judiciously' wisdom.
Alternatively, for the Ultra-Paranoid, you can simply run OpenBSD where most everything you need is included in the base install, and all "approved" 3rd party apps (ports/packages collection) have at least had source code closely examined by people with minds for code far better than yourself.
Dude, if I had some multi accounts, I'd mod you all the way up to +6!
losers
According to Rik:
Biological selection does nothing except removing the weak ones, it cannot automatically create systems which work well.
In short, I believe the biological selection is just that, selection. The creation of stuff will need some direction.
And I have to nod vigorously to that. Even taking the model of accelerated evolution through human breeding of species: you direct two animals together to breed. You don't just let the Ps, the F1s, the F2s, etc. just all wander around in a pen, have a sniper sitting on a post shooting the ones you don't want, and hoping the rest go at it...
but with my high-school level of physics, I don't understand how this relates to the 2nd law of thermo.
Isn't there something about eventually the universe undergoing heat death, where all useful forms of energy are converted to heat, which is the random vibration of molecules and thus "useless?" If so, does this device mean that we won't undergo heat death, since heat generated can be put back into something useful again, like electricity?
These can be reproduced without tubes more reliably, consistently, and cheaper.
Eee? The point is not to produce distortion. The point is that while tubes produce more distortion, it is even-order harmonics, and that the ear is far less sensitive to it, such that there is less "effective" distortion than the small amounts of odd-order produced by a solid state, to which the ear is far more sensitive. Tests show that 0.5% odd-order THD is easily heard by the ear, but that a few integral percentage points of even-order are necessary for detection.
And you are a pregnant teenage mother with a history of ear infections _and_ asthma? If not, you can't hear that waste of audio spectrum. Your dog might appreciate it, however.
Your point was that Vinyl had compressed frequency response. It does not. It may have compressed dynamic range, but that's another point. Whether or not humans can hear 30+ kHz frequencies is not a closed question -- why does SACD and DVDA spec out to 100 kHz? Surely they are not meant for my dog?
Another point: better frequency response allows for higher-order noise-shaping algorithms that do far less damage to the high frequencies that humans are proven to be able to hear. (20 kHz)
Jitter: I am referring to general clocking inaccuracies in things like the SPDIF interface. This is a measurable phenomenon, and is greatly minimized in some of the highest-end CD transports, like this one
As for what tubes can do that equivalent solid states cannot? See here. Tube amplifiers of equivalent power give far greater voltage swings, and moreover, clip far more gently than solid-states.
Fact 1:
Tube amplifiers produce Even-Order harmonic distortion. Psycoacoustics show humans are far less sensitive to even-order harmonic distortion than odd-order, meaning that a higher percentage is 'permissable' before becoming audible.
Fact 2:
Vinyl has frequency content out to 30+ kHz. Have the graphs to prove it.
Fact 3: equalizers introduce jitter. Jitter leads to distortion.
Opinion 1: original poster was dumb to use ad hominem attacks.
Opinion 2: your 'appeal to authority' argument (I am an EE, I work at a radio station, etc.) is just that -- a logical fallacy.
Enjoy!
My Sennheisers cost $400. Oh, and did I mention that cans do nothing for imaging and soundstage?
How difficult is it to emulate a moving target such as DirectX, especially since driver support on Linux is limited, and Microsoft seems to release a new DirectX version every 6 months or a year?
On the other hand, their subscription service looks interesting, although how much people will pay to "guide" their work to their favorite games is rather questionable. These things are not business apps, and the entire concept is made less palatable by the fact that the longer it takes to get a game running, the less desirable the game is.
Your explanation is perfect for the unwashed. :)
For completeness, I should point out that there are other approaches other than bracing and thick walls, such as JM-Reynaud's transmission lines together with his medite materials, or dipole electrostats such as the irreproachable Quad ESLs, which require absolutely no rigid walls whatsoever.
You fancy yourself an audiophile, but have never seen 4 wood/mdf slabs together in the shape of a tetrahedron?
AV-Reality
Except for the fact that your consumer-grade Karmen Hardon CD player sets the SCMS bit when you make a direct digital copy. Once that bit is set (and you do get one fair-use copy), you can't make any further copies. SCMS had been around since the mid-'80s; I'm surprised that it hasn't been mentioned here.
Something like the M-Audio Audiophile 2496 can be found for around $160 or so from DigitalConnection (cheaper than an SBLive 5.1 Plat), and you can toggle said SCMS bit on, or off, at will. Did I mention that it takes SPDIF in, and that it's a worthy card to consider anyway, if you're into even moderately high-end audio? (mmm, 24-bit dac, 96 khz sampling for recording...) For the average consumer, this is _the_ ultimate card for clean digital copies of these new CDs that are coming out.